Page 28 of Pack Nightmare

“Lex, welcome! I wasn’t expecting you. You’re not… here to get out of your reading, are you?” His teasing grin tells me he knows that’s not the case. I step inside the tiny room as he closes the book he was reading and settles back in his chair. The office is neat, although there’s barely room for a desk and chairs. It’s nearly empty aside from a few binders and a handful of books on the shelf crammed behind his desk.

“I guess you still need to get unpacked,” I comment as I take the vacant seat.

“Yeah, I don’t really have much stuff. I travel light. But I suppose now that I’m here, I should start building out my collection. Being a literature professor and all.” He grins, green eyes flashing, and I try to tamp down the ripple of excitement that goes through me in response.

“But I’m guessing you’re not here to discuss my empty shelves. So what can I do for you, Lex?”

“Honestly, I don’t really know why I’m here. I just had an alpha thing come up, but it’s not something you can help me with. I was intending to go to the library and just… kind of ended up here.”

He nods seriously. “Well, you did always come to me for advice, before. Maybe it’s that instinct resurfacing?”

“Maybe.”

The silence stretches between us, and my foot twitches nonstop. I know he’s waiting for me to spill whatever’s bothering me, but I’m not really sure I should trust him with pack business. An electric charge fills the air of the small room, and I rack my brain for something to say.

“How are your lessons going?”

His head tilts to the side. “Lessons, like my classes? Good so far, I guess. No complaints that I’m aware of.”

“No, your seer lessons. Roxanne told me you’d have to take some lessons with the pack seer to determine if you have the gift. That’s why you’re here, right? Because we need a replacement seer?”

“Ah.” Derrek’s cheeks flush and a distinctly guilty look crosses his expression. “Lex… I think it’s time for me to come clean. I need to tell you something, but can you hold off on your judgement until I’ve told you everything?”

Distrust rises in my chest. With a preface like that, something tells me whatever he has to say, I’m not going to like it. My jaw tightens, but I agree. “Okay, I’ll hear you out.”

“Um… would you close the door behind you?” He points to the narrow door that’s propped open with a hand weight. I have to move my chair to close it and then reclaim my seat.

The space suddenly feels even smaller with the door closed. I clasp my hands in my lap and focus on keeping my expression placid.

Derrek runs his fingers through his hair and mutters something to himself that sounds like ‘here goes nothing,’ before clearing his throat.

“Okay, so I told you on Monday that I met your uncle in LA at the ER, and he and his witch recognized instantly that I was… not human. That was all true.”

He pauses for confirmation, and I nod. I remember that part.

“Okay, so… the rest of it was… not exactly true.”

“How? I’m not following what you mean.”

“The part about me being related to your seer? I’m not, exactly. I’m more closely related to her relatives, the ones who created the faction and divided the pack.”

It takes me a second to take that all in. “You mean the witch who created the Montrose Pack and cursed my family line?”

He swallows, the gulp audible in the tiny space. “That’s the one. I was part of the Montrose Pack, and I ran away. I didn’t want to be part of their politics and their scheming. So I made my way out west, and that’s where I met you. And I didn’t run into a single soul like us out there.”

“But you knew who I was.” My tone is flat. My heart rate has been climbing ever since he admitted to lying to me, and the only thing going through my brain is Jared was right.

He rushes to explain. “No, I didn’t know who you were. You were Layla, then Lex, remember? I learned briefly of the Harridans in my pack, but you never used that name. I didn’t know anything about the whole extended history. I could tell you were a wolf, and that you didn’t realize it. That’s all I knew.”

My eyes narrow. “That seems pretty fucking convenient, if you ask me. You expect me to believe that you: ran away from the pack who wants my entire family dead, are even descended from the family who cast a curse that my mother ran away from, and just happened to find me on the other side of the country?” I can’t help reaching out with my instincts, but just as before, I can’t really get a handle on his emotions. It makes me feel weak, blind, having to lean on only the visual clues he gives me. It seems I’ve already become too accustomed to my alpha senses to help me navigate confrontation. “I thought my fated were being paranoid assholes about you. I defended you to them, and now I find out you not only lied to me the entire time I knew you, you popped back into my life like nothing happened in the last year and just kept on lying.”

I can’t remain in my seat any more. I’m furious that I came here on instinct for comfort, both at myself and at him. “I guess the good news is that since I’m the alpha now, I have the authority to get rid of you. I trust I won’t need to get our security team involved.”

“Wait, Lex, you promised to hear me out.” Derrek’s face has dropped, his expression desperate. “Just let me finish and then, if you still want me to leave, I’ll go. I swear.”

My heart clenches at the desperation in his voice, and it combats the waves of fury coursing through my blood. I glare at him for a moment, then settle stiffly in my chair. “Fine, finish your story.”

“Okay,” the hand goes through his hair again, and he paces behind his desk. “So, I ran away when I realized I could never be what my pack wanted. My mom was the pack witch, but I had next to no magic, and no siblings. Somehow she shielded me from their expectations, and I didn’t know they thought I was pursuing my education with the plan to return eventually and take my mother’s place. As much as I loved my mom, I didn’t want that life, nor did I have the power to be what they expected. The pack paid for my education, you understand? Sure, I got some scholarships, but they thought they were educating me in return for my future services. My mom… well, I guess she felt the pack owed her more than she had received, so she deceived us all.”

---